DIY Barn Door 2.0

You soon may start to notice that Dan tends to change his mind about projects. A lot. Remember when Dan stumbled upon his inner pyro and built that awesome barn door for our garage? Well guess what? He woke up one day, decided he didn’t like it, took it apart, and started building a new one. Don’t worry, sometimes I can’t keep up either.

Original barn door

I have to admit, the design he came up with for the new barn door did have a more authentic feel to it and also incorporated a cool chevron pattern.

The idea was to frame the outside of the door in a wide plank wood, and carry that through the center of the door as well. This broke the door into upper and lower halves. Within each half, Dan would incorporate the chevron pattern.

To start, he used a 4×8 piece of plywood as his base, cutting it to the measurements needed to fit the already existing doorway. He then used 1×8 pine and cut it down to 6 inches to frame the base, and then brought the 1×6 through the middle as well.

This photo was purposely not cropped to show you a glimpse of what happens when Dan turns the entire garage into his workshop.

Once the frame was complete, it was time to fill in the chevron. Dan used cedar fence pickets that were cut down the middle and pieced the pattern in one by one, cutting the ends at a 45 degree angle. It was like putting one big puzzle together, but getting to make the pieces as you go. Once the pattern was filled in, you’re left with a small triangle gap that Dan was able to make a special cut for.

Now that the door was built, it was time to test some stain to figure out exactly how we wanted the door to turn out. While a lot of the wood features in the garage are red mahogany, we wanted this one to be a truer light brown to give it more of an original barn door feel. We ended up going with General Finish Antique Walnut and it came out just as we pictured it. To seal everything in, Dan finished it off with a few coats of semi-gloss poly.

And because we’re using the same install mechanics as before, Dan added the wheels to the bottom and hooks to the top, allowing the door to slide smoothly behind the wall.

He also trimmed out the backside of the door with an X shape across the middle, giving it an even more authentic barn door feel.

Dan timed the completion of this project perfectly. It’s a heavy door and I wasn’t looking forward to having to help install it. Luckily, Dan’s bachelor party was the weekend of installation and his college buddy/best man was coming into town. Perfect opportunity for me to sit back, relax, and take a few pictures while they did all the grunt work.

Dan and Katie

Our neighbors think we're crazy, and our family probably does too. We're documenting all of our adventures and mishaps of falling in love with and renovating a 1930 fixer upper. We're in the midst of renovating our dream home, and squeezing in some DIY along the way.